End-of-life vehicle (ELV)
A vehicle that has reached the end of its useful life and is ready for dismantling and recycling.
An end-of-life vehicle (ELV) is a car that is no longer worth keeping on the road and is headed for dismantling and recycling. The term comes from recycling policy, especially in Europe, but is used worldwide.
Every junk car is an ELV. What happens next, depollution, parts recovery, crushing and shredding, determines how much of it is reused and what reaches a landfill.
The EPA’s 2008 summary of the EU’s End of Life Vehicles Directive says member states must set up collection systems and send ELVs to authorized treatment facilities, with deregistration based on a certificate of destruction, and that the last holder may dispose of the vehicle free of charge.1
References
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Recycling and Reuse: End-of-Life Vehicles and Producer Responsibility” (November 2008), https://archive.epa.gov/oswer/international/web/html/200811_elv_directive.html ↩